Quong Po- The Search for the Magical Secret
by Jollyfish
Summary: As a young wizard, Quong Po was curious about all kinds of magic. His favourite stories were told by his father who would sit down on his bed with him at night and tell him all about giant, winged lizards; their fiery breath and man-sized claws. Written for the Chocolate Frog Cards Competition by Ralinde.


**This is nothing like the other things I've written but I had lots of fun working on this story. Enjoy!:) ****Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, that wonderful world belongs to JKR.**

Throughout the world, Dragons were a whole new kind of unknown magic. In ancient China the folk laws told of sacred protectors of wealth and fortune. They were the bearers of good luck and promise for the future. For wizards at the time, Dragons were creatures of untameable and unpredictable powers, which could not be harnessed by even the most powerful of wizards, for fear of death. Torn between his new found intrigue of the wizarding killer and the mystical protector told of in his ancestors' stories, Quong Po sought to find the deepest secrets of the dragon and unfold the mysteries surrounding such a magical beast.

As a young wizard, Po was curious about all kinds of magic. He would scour his village in search of other little boys and girls to talk to, whom also shared his gift. Some of his new friends smuggled old books out for them to read and others had parents who knew about the ancient act, but Po's most favourite lesson was about Dragons. His father sat down on the bed with him at night and told him all about the giant, winged lizards; their fiery breath and man-sized claws. His tales were brief, but fascinating, and little Po stared wide eyed in awe at his daddy's words.

"Dragons are extremely dangerous creatures," said Po's father after his stories. "Do you remember what I said last time?"

Po vigorously nodded his head, "I mustn't go looking for the dragons! And if I see one close, I must not go and pat it!"

His father lightly ruffled Po's messy hair. "Of course you remember."

Little Po smiled brightly.

* * *

Around the tender age of thirteen Po became quite the adventurer. After his schooling in the afternoon, Po crept out of the village behind his home and ran up into the hills and out of sight of everyone among a dense network of trees. At the edge of the wood a cliff dropped and Po perched there, overlooking a great expanse of wild land, his legs dangling over the edge. His eyes quickly focused on a cave in the distance, and he waited patiently whilst the cool wind whipped around his face.

He waited and waited, all afternoon- his gaze still fixed on the cave. The sun was beginning to set and the evening drawing closer, when finally Po saw movement at the entrance. He shot bolt upright and stared. Out from the cave a scarlet dragon protruded its head and looked around. It then stalked forward and stretched out its wings (as if to yawn) and long, golden spines around its face stood on end menacingly. Po pulled a small piece of slate from his pocket and carefully began to sketch the magical creature. He drew its wings, its claws, its elegant scales. He labelled it: The Lion Dragon.

* * *

"Run!" screamed Po, brandishing his wand and sprinting down the dusty mountain path. The other men ran ahead, they too had their wands out ready to defend themselves. In the valley behind them a loud shriek echoed out, and a cloud of fire blasted out rock from the side of the mountain. The wizards threw themselves in a small alcove as the debris from the blast tumbled past them. Po caught his breath and then turned to his friends with a serious expression plastered on his face.

"Ok," he whispered. "Although that didn't go as planned, I think we were able to collect all of the relevant data."

He pulled out some parchment from his pocket and began to read out loud.

"Female, around 27 feet with a third-degree burn to her upper left shoulder. The cause is definitely from another dragon, possibly male but we are not sure at the present time. Is there anything else?"

"I noted there was a pungent odour of blood coming from beneath the nest," spoke a wizard opposite Po. "This could belong to the male beast we saw up North. I suggest that the female was either protecting her eggs or coming into season, which would account for the deep wounds in his side."

Po quickly added the suspicions to his notes and rolled up the parchment. "Thank you," he said, nodding to his fellow wizard. "Following on from this our next course of action will be to monitor and keep records of this particular female's behaviour. If she does have eggs and is nesting, that would be vital information for the breeding and conservation research. On the other hand, detailed accounts of her behaviour will be good for spotting the signs for when the female dragons are in season and preventing any other near-catastrophic incidents like today. Are there any questions?"

A small wizard raised his hand, "How are we planning on getting out of the valley alive?"

Po grinned, "As team leader it is my duty to get you all home safe and sound. So we will wait until the sun fully sets, when the dragon will most likely be sleeping, and then we will make our move!"

* * *

The tasks that Po and his men were completing were becoming more and more dangerous, and because of their desperate need to know more about the Dragons, they were running out of ideas on how to safely enter the caves and study them without getting seriously hurt. They had started training themselves to cast spells as one- strengthening the power of their magic and focusing it on a singularity. Once mastering this art, Po learnt how to brew strong ointments for burns and to help heal any magical injuries that would affect them during their studies.

After a training session at the Dragonology base camp, Po stood up in front of the other chattering wizards and relayed the next task to them,

"As you all know, a number of the females in the region now have eggs nesting up in the caves, in order to make sure that the breeding pattern and population increase of the Fireball dragon can be successfully recorded we need an approximation on how many eggs have been laid, hatched, and so on. This requires a team of about a dozen wizards."

Po pointed his wand at a blackboard and a map of the valley appeared.

"We will need two of you keeping a look out at the cave entrance... here and... here," said Po, sliding his wand across the slate. "Eight men will be surrounding the mother in case she wakes up and will be ready to perform the stunning charm or any other spell needed to subdue the beast. A volunteer and I will be examining the eggs and taking notes. We leave tonight."

The wizards all collectively nodded as Po went through the draft mission, and then got into groups and began to prepare themselves for part they played in the later task. The team of eight wizards practiced duelling and combining their magic. Po took his helper to one side and they went through what they would be looking for in the nest.

"We need to write down the number of eggs; whether they have hatched yet, or not; the shade of the shell, the size, and so on and so forth. This job is of up most importance, so it is vital we do it accurately..."

* * *

Po looked up to the night's sky, it was clear and littered with hundreds of thousands of stars. He was chilled to the bone but the adrenaline pumping through his body kept him going up the mountain path that was getting ever steeper. Behind him, the other eleven wizards were beginning to get restless and kept jumping and shaking their arms to relieve themselves of the tension.

At the entrance of the cave, Po stood with his back pressed against the rock wall, listening for any sign of movement. After what had seemed like a reasonable length of time had passed, the wizard held out his arm and signalled with his fingers for the other wizards to join him. Once all the shuffling had stopped, Po took a deep breath and moved out cautiously to the front of the cave and lit his wand. A little orb of light glided through the air, and stopped a metre from the ceiling and bobbed up and down peacefully. Seeing the sleeping dragon, Po smiled reservedly; it really was a beautiful beast.

The wizards hurried into the cave and took their positions around the mother dragon, whilst Po and his aid crouched near the snout of the Fireball. Here, her eggs were nestled among large tree branches, being warmed by her fiery breath.

"There are six eggs," whispered Po, crouching by the nest. "Five of which are still incubating well, and one has already hatched."

Po's fellow wizard looked up from his notes and searched around him for the lost hatchling, carefully lifting up his feet and looking behind them. It was nowhere to be seen. Po made a vague gesture with his hands holding them apart to indicate the approximate size of the small dragon. His eyebrows wrinkled in a confused manner as they looked around for the beast and eventually he poked the wizard next to him.

"It isn't here. Can you see it?"

"No, I can't. It seems to have disap-"

The Fireball stirred, and all of the wizards pointed their wands at the dragon, Po whipped his wand from his pocket and jumped backwards slightly. It stirred again, this time letting out a cloud of smoke from its nostrils. All the men readied themselves, raising their wands for when the smoke cleared but as the cloud faded they let out a deep sigh of relief- the dragon was still asleep. Letting down his guard slightly, Po moved back towards the nest, and from underneath the mother's claws a dead hatchling lay limp and still. Po pointed towards the body and his assistant nodded. With baited breath they pulled the dragon from the claws of its mother and placed it in a bag to take back to the base. They also took the broken egg shell and wrapped it in cloth, putting it with the young dragon. After taking as many recordings as they could without disturbing the rest of the nest, Po and his team left the cave unhurt and without any trouble. So much for all of that training, thought Po.

* * *

The remains of a bright red dragon's egg sat on Quong Po's desk, its golden flecks glimmering in the candle light. Over the months that had followed the mission into the caves, Po had studied the corpse of the hatchling- drawing it's anatomy on the slate board. And later on, the skeleton was preserved for future reference to teach the students arriving from abroad. The little dragon hatchling fascinated Po, as if he were a child once more, and he battled on, finding precious magical properties in many of the creature's organs. However, for Po, his biggest challenge was the egg shell.

In order to discover more about it, he removed the inner- nutrient lining and placed a small cutting in a cauldron and mixed it with a simple magical brew to see if the ingredients reacted any differently. To the wizard's surprise nothing happened, the potion remained the same. From what he had seen in the caves, the pretty scarlet shell under examination definitely possessed magical qualities, indeed. Under the intense heat and flames of the mother dragon, the shell did not crack of its own accord. It was powerful and could withstand the spells of most talented wizards. It was, it seemed, indestructible to a magical force. Po placed the remains of the egg on the desk in his office and faced it from across the room. He fired spells at it and each time jumped to the side as every spell reflected back and threatened to hit him.

"It seems, my good friend, that you are indestructible by magical means. I wonder how you will cope with a non-magical destructive force."

Po ran to a cupboard and pulled out a pestle and mortar. Then he placed the shell inside the wooden bowl and unmercifully ground it to a fine powder. Po looked at it for a moment, proud of his accomplishment, then a realisation dawned over him. Pulling glass bottles full of ingredients from a chest, he started making an old recipe for a weak ointment that he and his men used for burns. Before it was fully boiled Po added his final ingredient and sprinkled a small amount of the powdered egg into the bubbling mixture. Slowly but surely, the mix turned a deep red and Po's heart stopped for a split second. He poured the contents of the cauldron into a number of bottles and eyed them thoughtfully. Then he ran out of the room to find another willing volunteer his eyes now sparkled with glee.

* * *

His chosen victim edged towards the little bottles filled with red ointment apprehensively.

"Trust me," said Po. "I am sure it will not harm you in any way."

"It is not you that I don't trust it is that," said the wizard pointing at the bottles, "which I don't trust."

"Everything will be fine, I assure you. If anything, it will help for what I'm going to do. Just stand there, and put the ointment on your arm," ordered Po.

The wizard quickly rubbed the thick cream on his arm and held it out to Po who was standing across the other side of the room.

"In that ointment which you have put on your arm, I have added a spoonful of powdered Fireball egg shell. Now if my predictions are correct, the properties of the shell -which protect the dragon foetus in the egg from a magical outside force- will now act within our old burn treatment ointment. So if I were to do this..." Po aimed his wand and flicked it at the wizard's arm; violent flames erupted from the tip of it. "It wouldn't hurt or scald the flesh because the powdered shell repels or reflects the magical flames coming from my wand."

Paling slightly and staring at his unburnt arm, the guinea-pig wizard supported himself against a table. Po sat down in a large wooden chair and gazed upon his new found discovery. It would change the way that magic could be used within potions. It would save lives, and prevent injuries. He leapt up and grabbed the small bottles of his ointment, and dashed into the base camp's sitting area where other wizards were socialising.

"Men! Gather your things." Po shouted. "We are going to collect the egg shells of the new dragon hatchlings for further research. We leave tonight..."

Quong Po had harnessed the power of the sacred protector: the giant, winged lizard of claws and elegant red scales. He had discovered the secret of the Chinese Fireball Dragon. Po's dream was complete.

**A/N: What did you think? Thanks for reading and if you aren't rushing off to a New Year's party please leave a review:) Happy New Year x**


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